Reality doesn't make sense

[jackfaire]

I have noticed a trend. When I watch a movie I automatically assume that in the movie world things will not work like in my world. Sending a walkie talkie to a girl in the movie world is cute and gets you a date in the real world cops are being called.

Now that being said one thing does confuse me. Aliens travel to our world in the movie and blow the hell out of our major cities somehow apparently knowing which ones those are though having a different culture than us.

Does that have people going nuh uh no way. Nope not at all people call awesome and move on.

But oh my god if your computer is able to plant a virus in a computer with a different operating system that's just beyond belief.

So tell me why is it that you can suspend disbelief for something out of this world but something that's actually plausible, as per the example they could have reverse engineered the code offscreen much like they figured out how to fly the ship offscreen, sends people off the depend into "that movie was so unrealistic"?

[blas87]

Don't get me wrong, I love movies and all, but sometimes, I have so many questions and want to roll my eyes so much.

Horror movies....why does the killer only attack when a couple is naked or having sex or a girl is stripping or naked?

Why doesn't anyone ever go somewhere well lit? Why is it always an abandoned factory or a garage or tool shed, or fuckinaye, a lake? Seriously?

Why do they find a good spot to hide, then try to take a peek and see where the killer went?

[smileyeagle1021]

In fairness, if we are talking about Independence Day (which I think is the movie that is most often sighted for the computer virus being unbelievable) there actually is more plausible that they'd recognize the major cities despite different cultures... after all, our major cities do tend to be quite large, and typically the most important parts of those cities are where it is most crowded. That is something that no matter what the culture is a good target if your goal is to destroy your opponent (you don't have to know why Washington DC is important to know that blowing the shit out of it will leave a lot less people to fight you).
Now, I guess there is something to be said in how they know DC is more important than say Denver or Portland, but there is nothing to say that they didn't get lucky on randomly choosing a large city (or that more cities weren't destroyed off camera).
As far as the computer virus, you are thinking in terms of someone using a macbook running MAC OS 10 to write a virus for a Sony running Windows 7, which is not only plausible, but quite common. What the movie depicts is using a Macbook (running a much older version of MAC OS, but even saying it is a modern laptop, the argument would still stand) to write a virus for a computer that may or may not have the same basic technology (we use silicone based processors and magnetic storage, for all we know an alien civilization would use carbon based processors and optic storage, and that's just using my imagination on Earth based materials, who knows what would be available on an alien world). So, we don't even know that Earth tech and alien tech would be compatible enough to even transfer the virus to... in fact, odds are that any race with technology capable of traveling from another star system to here will be mostly incompatible with our tech.
As far as decoding the code, yes that is possible, but not in the time period given. It took us decades to translate Egyptian, and that was a human language, and even then the only reason we were able to was because we found the Rosetta stone which had writing in both Egyptian and Greek. Even modern languages, that we know, when encoded can take years to decode, we finally gave up trying to decode German messages in World War Two and had to settle for stealing their encoders. The idea that (short of some form of artificial intelligence that can speed up the process, which would have been a good plot hole filler if they had used it... and such a technology were possible) we could have deciphered not only an alien language but how they coded it in mere days is beyond belief.

[Rapscallion]

I think it was Larry Niven who came up with the concept of Bolognium. A Sci-Fi audience will accept one element of bolognium (something that's baloney - a super-strong material for example, such as scrith in the ringworld series) quite readily, since they know the genre. Two requires a really good author.

Three? Forget it.

ID made too much bolognium for people to accept. It's not the only one.

Rapscallion

[lordlundar]

smiley makes a point on the cities, as in ID4 they did mention all major (aka large) cities were hit simultaneously. The one that stick in my craw about the movie is that they mentioned that they took out NORAD before the major attack. NORAD's all but invisible from sub orbit which is why it was such an effective system during the Cold War. Wiping that out is no small feat, let alone doing it with the pinpoint precision to prevent the response.

[Ginger Tea]

Smilies post is a bit too wall of text for my eyes to read at the moment (sorry I had one of my post work dozes and can only manage short paragraphs without them starting to look like magic eyes).

But from what I could see, major cities is the key part, who would point a mega cannon space ship at a village?
Now the fact they parked above the white house is a bit suspect, if you have just got there how do you know its the leader of this particular land mass's capital building?
I know it was very Americancentric and the rest of the world was just meantioned in passing, but I don't remember any UK ones on Buck Pallace or the houses of Parliment to hint that "We know who you are, we know where your leaders are."

[smileyeagle1021]

Now the fact they parked above the white house is a bit suspect, if you have just got there how do you know its the leader of this particular land mass's capital building?

They don't... but at least in the case of the White House, there is a lot of military presence there. They don't necessarily know the significance of the building, but they know that we are willing to go to great lengths to defend it, so it must be important.

[Ginger Tea]

Never seen actual around the area photos or video's, just people infront of the fence talking on news, so if there is a crap tonne of tanks and army day in day out (or what ever they have that is quite prominant in the air) then yes I see your point.

Oh and my eyes stopped spazzing out so I have read your post

[BlaqueKatt]

to write a virus for a computer that may or may not have the same basic technology (we use silicone based processors and magnetic storage, for all we know an alien civilization would use carbon based processors and optic storage, and that's just using my imagination on Earth based materials, who knows what would be available on an alien world). So, we don't even know that Earth tech and alien tech would be compatible enough to even transfer the virus to... in fact, odds are that any race with technology capable of traveling from another star system to here will be mostly incompatible with our tech.
As far as decoding the code, yes that is possible, but not in the time period given.

But in the seven minutes of cut scenes included in the extended release Independence Day DVD, Goldblum is actually shown tinkering with his PowerBook inside the recovered craft from the Roswell crash site, mumbling something about how the spaceship was running off the same programming language he was able to decipher before (when he first uncovered their invasion plans and all that).

Read more: 7 Famous Movie Flaws That Were Explained in Deleted Scenes | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_18720...#ixzz1VnPRVMBj

[jackfaire]

With the White House that was also where Welcome Wagon originated giving them a clue DC itself is a large city. Also don't know how well their translators are. They have some level of telepathy so that could have played into it interestingly though they kept that low key.

[Greenday]

Well, they just need to look for the most densely populated areas in each country. That would be most major cities. Really wouldn't be that hard to figure out. And since we know they've been scouting Earth, it's not like they've only had a couple of days to figure it out.

[LewisLegion]

Didn't they also point out the aliens originally crashlanded at Roswell? The indication was they had been surveilling us for a very long time before the attack...doubtlessly monitoring radio and television and various other communications for quite a long time. If they were doing that, it would be fairly obvious to them the most strategic locations to take out.

[Greenday]

Yea, that's what I was saying. That crash indicates they've been scouting Earth for years. Let's face it, it wouldn't take years just to figure out which areas on the Earth are the most important cities.